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PENETRATING THE PENTAGON

Published: April 18, 1982

RICHARD HALLORAN is a reporter in the Washington bureau of The Times. BY RICHARD HALLORAN

Among the offbeat places in Washington that are at least partly open to visitors but rarely included in sightseeing plans is the Pentagon. That's understandable. The Pentagon is a low-lying block of concrete that could easily win a booby prize for architecture and has a reputation, well-deserved at one time, for being dreary. Memories of anti-war demonstrations that began during the days of Vietnam and continue occasionally today surely don't make the Pentagon more appealing. Moreover, the inside is a maze of five rings, each with five floors, within the five-sided structure that is the world's largest office building. Physically and politically, the Pentagon is the butt of endless jokes.

On the other hand, the Pentagon has always been in the news, more at one time than another, but still a place that affects the lives of every American. The politicians and bureaucrats, the generals and the admirals who work there plan to spend $195 billion of the taxpayers' money this year and $215 billion next year. That alone is worthy of notice.

Beyond that, and unknown even to many people who live in Washington, the Pentagon has several attractive displays. The collection of oversize ship models may be the best in the world. Military art, some of it professional and some amateur, lines many of the corridors to illuminate the heroism and the horror of war. Memorials to great military leaders can make history a little more real. One alcove, the Hall of Heroes, honors with quiet dignity the 3,400 military people who have won the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration.

Visitors cannot wander freely around the Pentagon because much of the work done there is secret. But hourlong public tours begin with a short film showing that the Pentagon was built during the early days of World War II in 16 months at a cost of $83 million, a figure that wouldn't buy two F-14 Navy jet fighters today. The film also tells viewers that the Pentagon was to be turned into a warehouse for records after the war.

The film is followed by a walking tour led by a well turned-out young soldier, sailor, airman or marine. The guide takes a small group through the corridors and alcoves dedicated to military leaders, such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, George C. Marshall and Douglas MacArthur. Those memorials and the other displays are the brainchild of Melvin Laird, the Secretary of Defense in the early 1970's, who wanted the drab interior of the Pentagon dressed up and made attractive for visitors, including taxpayers. There is even an alcove dedicated to news correspondents and named, appropriately enough, for Ernie Pyle, the respected correspondent killed during World War II.

The most appealing pictures in the places named for the military leaders are, curiously, those stiff, posed portraits taken when they were young officers on somebody's staff. There is memorabilia, such as an ''eyes only'' wartime message from General Marshall, then chief of staff of the Army, to General Eisenhower, the supreme commander in Britain preparing for the invasion of Normandy. Marshall told Eisenhower he needed a fresh outlook for the battle and said: ''Now come on home and see your wife and trust somebody else for 20 minutes in England.''

The MacArthur corridor, like its namesake, has been controversial. Admirers of the general, famed for his ''I shall return'' slogan that inspired hope in Filipinos during the Japanese Occupation, had asked that a memorial be arranged for him in the Pentagon. But Harold Brown, the Secretary of Defense in the Carter Administration, disapproved because he considered General MacArthur to have been insubordinate to President Truman, who recalled him from Korea in 1951.

However, Caspar W. Weinberger, the present Secretary of Defense, is among the MacArthur admirers, having served on the general's staff in the South Pacific during World War II. Thus, the memorial was dedicated last fall in the presence of President Reagan and Mrs. MacArthur, the general's widow. It includes no mention of the general's dismissal by President Truman. But it does have General MacArthur's uniform as first captain of cadets at West Point and other mementos, including the handwritten final page of his memoirs, in which he noted that ''the shadows are lengthening for me'' and went on to say: ''In my dreams, I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange mournful mutter of the battlefield.'' That was from his peroration at West Point, where the general, who had a Churchillian command of the English language, said that his last thoughts would be of ''the Corps and the Corps and the Corps.''

The art in the Pentagon includes, without stretching the definition too far, a collection of models of warships, several of them over six feet long. Enclosed in glass cases, the models are detailed images of giant nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, such as the Enterprise, sleek Spruance-class destroyers and agile frigates of the Oliver Hazard Perry type, and sinister dark submarines that patrol the seas endlessly and silently. One model is of the Boston-based Constitution, or ''Old Ironsides,'' the oldest commissioned ship in the Navy and still carried on the rolls as a ship of the line.